|
| Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann
|
news update
User ID: 86438
4/27/2006 3:55 PM
Report abusive post | |
|
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 62398
4/27/2006 4:01 PM | |
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 52913
4/27/2006 4:04 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
cool photos,
and the animation sequence,
breaking up, is the statement., and it looks like they are scattering apart in all directions. |
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 84755
4/27/2006 4:04 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
COMETS ARE NOT DIRTY SNOWBALLS! |
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 86336
4/27/2006 4:06 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
Bump for WHOA!
Now I am impressed with this event! |
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 1971
4/27/2006 4:06 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
Anyone notice the spiral pattern of the fragments trailing just behind the main body?
Cool.
But, the scattering and slowing of the fragments is frightening. Hopefully, we will just get one helluva meteor show? |
|
IGASOP
User ID: 52714
4/27/2006 4:12 PM
 | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
And why exactly do they want to do away with the Hubble Telescope?
Fucking Morons... |
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 80944
4/27/2006 4:14 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
This is all trailing behind th main body
that is going to pass in front of us.
WE ARE GOING TO BE HAMMERED!
just the fact that these 'fragments are visible at all should tell you that
they are still quite large and devestating!
Perhaps this is the comet they struck
and now we are all screwed.
If you wanted to lower the population
to 500,000 this would be an excellent way
to do it if you were prepared to survive!
 |
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 82989
4/27/2006 4:14 PM | |
news
User ID: 86438 (OP)
4/27/2006 4:16 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
wonderul view
all this pieces move in diferent directions as well . |
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 19271
4/27/2006 4:17 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
FNA .... thats just two of em' ... amazing ...looks like a blast from DicK Cheney's Shotgun...YIKES!! |
|
Fragments gone wild
User ID: 5160
4/27/2006 4:17 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
Wow how many Fragments are there?
 |
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 82989
4/27/2006 4:19 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
Before today they had counted 40+ fragments.
Now it looks like that was a little low. |
|
s2
User ID: 74188
4/27/2006 4:19 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
where exactly is this fucking thing? |
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 19271
4/27/2006 4:20 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
Notice on the Animation link above that the dates are over a week ago ... and it looks like they frags are spreading out in all diretions!!! |
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 62398
4/27/2006 4:21 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
Now think why are the MSM saying FUCK ALL about it!
''Nothing to see here folks!'' |
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 77516
4/27/2006 4:22 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
40?
Man, after seeing that link.. I'd say 400 |
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 74215
4/27/2006 4:23 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
buttfucked by buckshot. figures. |
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 10264
4/27/2006 4:23 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
[link to spaceweather.com]
Dying comet 73P/Schwassmann Wachmann 3 is falling apart with a vengence. Even the fragments are fragmenting. Last night University of Arizona astronomer Carl Hergenrother took this picture of Fragment G, which is now a swarm of more than 15 pieces:
As the comet crumbles, fresh veins of ice and dust are exposed to sunlight, causing the pieces to brighten. Fragment G (mag. 12) is still too faint for most backyard telescopes, but Fragment B (mag. 9) is an easy target--and it is undergoing a similar disruption event. |
|
news
User ID: 86438 (OP)
4/27/2006 4:25 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
look how big is tail of fragment G as well in the night sky
[link to imgsrc.hubblesite.org]
boomp for boomp balls  |
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 1884
4/27/2006 4:29 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
Wow. an actual useful and impressive thread on GLP. It really may be the end. |
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 10264
4/27/2006 4:35 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
Trin or Trav, PIN THIS !
 |
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 82989
4/27/2006 4:41 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
Most likely we are looking at 100's of fragments and every day new fragments are created.
Furthermore every new day seems to bring it a little closer to earth.
At first it was 7.3 million miles away, then 6.5 million, then 6 million and now NASA says 5.5 million.
As each day passes they keep adding more fragments and shorting the distance that these fragments get to earth.
I guess we now know that they cannot track all of these fragments so if they cannot track all of these fragments how can they tell these fragments are no threat to earth.
They can't. |
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 82710
4/27/2006 4:45 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
 for truth
awaken folks very soon the laughter will cease |
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 84505
4/27/2006 4:46 PM | |
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 84505
4/27/2006 4:46 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
update page from the European/Hubble Telescope site (more photos and videos at link)
News - heic0605: Hubble provides spectacular view of ongoing comet breakup
27-Apr-2006: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is providing astronomers with extraordinary views of comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 as it disintegrates before our eyes. Recent Hubble images have uncovered many more fragments than have been reported by ground-based observers. These observations provide an unprecedented opportunity to study the demise of a comet nucleus.
Amateur and professional astronomers around the world have been tracking the spectacular disintegration of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 for years. As it plummets towards a close encounter with the Sun, swinging round the Sun on 7 June and heading away to begin another loop round the Solar System, the comet will pass the Earth on 12 May, at a distance of 11.7 million kilometres, or 30 times the distance between Earth and the Moon.
The comet currently comprises a chain of over 33 separate fragments, named alphabetically, and stretching across several degrees on the sky (the Sun and Moon each have an apparent diameter of about 1/2 a degree). Ground-based observers have noted dramatic brightening events associated with some of the fragments indicating that they are continuing to break up and that some may disappear altogether.
Hubble caught two of the fragments, B and G, shortly after major outbursts in activity. The resulting images reveal that an amazing process of hierarchical destruction is taking place, in which the larger fragments are continuing to break up into smaller chunks. Several dozen "mini-fragments" are to be found trailing behind each main fragment, probably associated with the ejection of house-sized chunks of surface material that can only be detected in these very high-resolution Hubble images.
Sequential Hubble images of the B fragment, taken a few days apart, suggest that the chunks are pushed down the tail by outgassing from the icy, sunward-facing surfaces of the chunks, much like space-walking astronauts are propelled by their jetpacks. The smaller chunks have the lowest mass, and so are accelerated away from the parent nucleus faster than the larger chunks. Some of the chunks seem to dissipate completely over the course of several days.
One of the European team members, Philippe Lamy from Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, France, says “When we observed the comet in late 2001 we concluded that many small, by then invisible, fragments had to be created by fragmentation to account for the missing mass. The new Hubble observations beautifully confirm and illustrate our past findings.”
Cometary nuclei are deep-frozen relics of the early Solar System, consisting of porous and fragile mixes of dust and ices. They can be broken up by many different mechanisms: be ripped apart by gravitational tidal forces when they pass near large bodies (for example, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was torn to pieces when it skirted near Jupiter in 1992, before plunging into Jupiter’s atmosphere two years later), fly apart as the nucleus rotates rapidly, crumble under thermal stresses as they pass near the Sun, or pop apart explosively like corks from champagne bottles as trapped volatile gases burst out.
"Catastrophic breakups may be the ultimate fate of most comets," says planetary astronomer Hal Weaver of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, who led the international team that made the recent Hubble observations and who used Hubble previously to study the fragmentations of comets Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1993-1994, Hyakutake in 1996, and 1999 S4 (LINEAR) in 2000. Analysis of the new Hubble data, and data taken by other observatories as the comet approaches the Earth and Sun, may reveal which of these breakup mechanisms are contributing to the disintegration of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3.
German astronomers Arnold Schwassmann and Arno Arthur Wachmann discovered this comet during a photographic search for asteroids in 1930, when the comet passed within 9.3 million kilometres of the Earth (only 24 times the Earth-Moon distance). The comet orbits the Sun every 5.4 years, but it was not seen again until 1979. The comet was missed again in 1985 but has been observed at every return since then.
During the autumn of 1995, the comet had a huge outburst in activity and shortly afterwards four separate nuclei were identified and labelled "A", "B", "C", and "D", with "C" being the largest and the presumed principal remnant of the original nucleus. Only the C and B fragments were definitively observed during the next return, possibly because of the poor geometry of the 2000-2001 apparition. The much better observing circumstances during this year’s return may be partly responsible for the detection of so many new fragments, but it is also likely that the disintegration of the comet is now accelerating. Whether any of the many fragments will survive the trip around the Sun remains to be seen.
Notes for editors:
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.
Besides Weaver, the other members of the Hubble observing team are: Carey Lisse (JHU/APL), Philippe Lamy (Laboratoire d'Astronomie Spatiale, France), Imre Toth (Hungarian Academy of Sciences), William Reach (IPAC/Caltech) and Max Mutchler (STScI).
Image credit: NASA, ESA, H. Weaver (JHU/APL), M. Mutchler and Z. Levay (STScI) |
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 10264
4/27/2006 4:47 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
NASA has orbit simulations (ephemerides) for 42 chunks of this mofo !
[link to neo.jpl.nasa.gov]
What happens to all of our communication satellites in orbit as we pass though the debris field of it's tail ?
More like BURNT toast Trin, and thanks for pinning this!
|
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 84505
4/27/2006 4:49 PM | |
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 86461
4/27/2006 4:49 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
interesting pics. truly. |
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 84505
4/27/2006 4:50 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
[link to www.lpl.arizona.edu]
Observations of Comet 73P/Schwassman-Wachmann 3
Observations by Carl Hergenrother (Lunar and Planetary Lab [LPL], University of Arizona & Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory [SAO]), Gil Esquerdo (Planetary Science Institute [PSI] and SAO) and Kyle Smalley (SAO)
Latest News (Updated 2006 Apr. 27, 13:00 UT):
Images of 73P-G from Apr. 27 UT are now up. |
|
Anonymous Coward
User ID: 3027
4/27/2006 4:50 PM | | Re: breaking !!!! Hubble picters of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann | Quote |
Please re-pin ScienceOnly's thread...
This thing is starting to really worry me.
Wish we had some firm data from something somewhere on whether or not we're really gonna get gobsmacked. |
|
| Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
|
